The Coming Abortion Backlash

Dave Weigel foresees a backlash looming against a lot of newly elected anti-abortion House Republicans, a group that “include[s] lots of people who took over suburban districts that had been trending more liberal.”

It sounds plausible to me. Anti-abortion activists quietly cemented their control over even northeastern outposts of the GOP back during the 2000s, as witnessed by Chris Christie’s pre-primary abortion flip-flop. Clearly, though, the surge in GOP vote in 2010 relative to 2008 and 2006 wasn’t actually driven by a shift in the ground on abortion.